No joy in Dublin,one tourney had QQ beaten by KQ when all in and in the main event had QQ again beaten by 99 again all in,nothing really running right atm was going to play the 300 euro on the Saturday and the 200 on a Sunday but arranged early flight home mainly coz just don't feel lucky or confident when going all in,keeping trying to find some pma but difficult when bad beats hit you like that.Was your comp online or live?

kennyb41 wrote:No joy in Dublin,one tourney had QQ beaten by KQ when all in and in the main event had QQ again beaten by 99 again all in,nothing really running right atm was going to play the 300 euro on the Saturday and the 200 on a Sunday but arranged early flight home mainly coz just don't feel lucky or confident when going all in,keeping trying to find some pma but difficult when bad beats hit you like that.Was your comp online or live?

Its a fucker when your luck is out. Mine was live in my local workingmans club, 7 of us put a fiver in, winner takes all.

Not sure the hand-wringing being directed at Ashwin for his Mankad dismissal of Buttler in the IPL last night is entirely justified. As good as Buttler is, he has form for setting off too early. All Ashwin did was ask the question of the Umpires, which is literally how any dismissal is achieved. They should clarify the rules if it's so dreadful.

Had he warned him first, would that be okay? I thought it was fair enough when Sri Lanka did it to him previously because he was setting off too early. If you know a player has a weakness for it, presumably it's up to the batsman to address the issue?

I’m probably with Devi on this, in principle. Ashwin doesn’t appear to have any intention of delivering the ball. When he places his front foot, as though to deliver, Buttler is still inside. If that’s the rule it needs to be better defined.

Very harsh on Willey, who has been largely terrific in a blue shirt for England since the last WC and a big vote of confidence for the still largely untested but highly rated Archer.

Does anyone care to make a prediction? For me I can't see past India or Australia taking it because they're both more likely than other sides to show resilience in the knock-out rounds. It seems likely that this will be a draining experience for bowlers and it wouldn't surprise me if we see a few 400+ scores, maybe one 500+. I can see England doing very well in the opening round robin but ultimately choking in the finals. Lots of hay being made for the depth of batting but when you're an injury away from resorting to Vince again, it doesn't seem as powerful as it has done at various points throughout the past few years when Hales was also available. Stokes and Ali remain potent batsmen in theory but both seem to have softened over the past year or so.

England have obviously been incredible in the last couple of years but all these outrageous run chases just leave me thinking that we’re conceding too many runs and will inevitably fall 13 runs short of 380 in the semis.